The Problem of the Green Capsule Read Online Free PDF Page B

curtains, stood open. It was what used to be called a Music Room, of the elaborate variety, with a piano and a radio-gramophone; the chairs now looked disarranged. Folding doors (closed) communicated with the farthest room of the three. The silence itself was thick enough to suggest unpleasant possibilities.
    “Hello!” Elliot called out.
    Nobody answered. He moved on to look in at the windows of the other lighted room, with which the folding doors communicated. And he stopped short.
    In the narrow green aisle between the house and the chestnut trees, just outside the windows of the far room, lay as odd an assortment of articles as Elliot had ever seen. The first thing he noticed was a top-hat, a tall and shiny top-hat of the old-fashioned sort, its nap badly rubbed. Beside it had been flung down a long old-fashioned raincoat with deep pockets, also much worn. Near this lay a brown wool muffler—and a pair of dark sun-glasses. Finally, there stood amid this heap of castoff clothing a black leather bag, rather larger than a doctor’s bag but not so large as a suitcase. On the black bag had been painted the words, R. H. Nemo, M. D.
    “It looks,” observed Major Crow coolly, “as though somebody has been undressing.”
    Elliot did not reply. For he had just looked into the room; and it was not a pleasant sight.
    Both windows of this room were also ajar. It had been fitted up as an office or study. In the centre stood a broad table with blotter and pen-tray, and a desk-chair behind it on Elliot’s left. A person sitting in this chair would be facing the double-doors to the other room. A bronze lamp on this table held an electric bulb of such intense, blinding brilliancy that Elliot knew it for a Photoflood bulb, the sort with which indoor photographs are taken; the shade of the lamp was tilted so that its full glare would fall on the face and body of anyone sitting in that desk-chair. And there was someone sitting in the desk-chair now.
    Marcus Chesney sat sideways, his shoulders hunched together and his hands gripping the arm of the chair as though he were trying to push himself to his feet. But it was only the illusion of being alive. His feet trailed out, and his weight rested against the back of the chair. His face was cyanosed, the forehead-veins standing out dark blue and swollen. Against this the grey-white of his hair appeared in startling contrast. The congested eyelids were shut, and there was still a slight froth on the lips.
    All this the Photoflood lamp, tilted and focused on him, brought out with a merciless clarity of white light. In the wall behind Marcus Chesney’s back there was a mantelpiece of polished wood; and on this mantelpiece stood a white-faced clock whose busy little pendulum switched back and forth with loud ticking. Its hands pointed to twenty-five minutes past twelve.
    “Yes, he’s gone,” said Major Crow, in what he tried to make a brisk tone, “But—look here——”
    His voice trailed off in protest. The ticking of the clock was inordinately loud. Even from the window they could smell the bitter-almonds odour.
    “Yes, sir?” said Elliot, memorising details.
    “He looks as though he pegged out hard. Pain, I mean.”
    “He did.”
    “Joe Chesney said it was cyanide. And then there’s that odour: I can’t say I’ve ever smelled it before, but everybody knows about it. But isn’t cyanide the stuff that strikes like lightning and kills instantaneously; no pain at all?”
    “No, sir. There’s no poison that does that. It’s very rapid, but only rapid in the sense that it takes minutes instead of——”
    Here, this wouldn’t do; he had to get on with it. But, as Elliot stood in the window, his imagination took the ugly exhibits in that room and fitted them together in a picture of remarkable vividness. Here was the dead man sitting behind a table that faced the double-doors across the room, with a strong light set to shine on him. It was like a stage—with illuminations. If